Vengeful Abduction
by Andovia212
Summary: Imagine the time before Danny Phantom came into existence. Vlad Masters was all alone in every sense of the word, and loneliness can drive a man to some desperate measures. What, then, can happen when that lonely desperation combines and warps with a drive for revenge? Terrible, terrible things. AU. Rated T for now but might go up to M. Triggers will be listed as needed.
1. Chapter 1

White and red silk billowed out behind him, the familiar tug on his neck soothing as he flew towards his destination. He was high enough to not bother with invisibility and his heated core kept ice from forming over him at this altitude. It wasn't much to keep at his top speed, so it took perhaps an hour before he started to descend, slipping out of the visible spectrum as the corn fields and highways turned back to city limits. It wasn't a particularly large city, but it was the next one on his list despite how much he'd wanted to avoid the area. He knew who lived here, and he did not intend on running into that buffoon.

Still, he had a job he'd given himself, and he intended on succeeding. As he slowed to a hovering stop above the edge of town, he unclipped a sleek black scanner from his belt. He wished he could say it was his newest invention, but it was certainly no longer that. A few scratches here and there, the battery life wasn't as strong as before, and the button stuck a little on occasion. Still, the mechanisms and screen worked perfectly fine, so the device hardly needed an update. It was more just a disappointment that he'd yet to find his perfect specimen even after all the time he's had searching. Not that he was merely accepting defeat- far from it. He had arranged for vacation time from his various positions and would dedicate the next two weeks (minus the three days which had passed already) to finding what he wanted. And the technology in his hand would lead him to it. He turned it on and after loading a few seconds, the map lit up the screen. It was a perfectly topographical view of the city in front of him including every building in its proper height and spread across it were twenty to thirty green dots glowing steadily as they moved around. He made a mental note of where _that_ building was and decided it was far enough away to work in his usual manner. Start with the closest dot and work his way through the city.

The specter kept himself perfectly invisible and silent as he steadily flew between the locations, turning off the keys for each one as they failed to be what he wanted from them. Too big, too small, too old, too young, too ugly, too loud, always at least one thing wrong with each of them. He was doing his best to keep his temper, but his patience was growing thin. Spending years, almost three by this point, trying to find the perfect person, going from city to city, state to state, looking everywhere and at every possible specimen all in between his other goals and running his business empire. And he'd only reached Illinois after starting on the East Coast! He believed he had every right to be frustrated. Still, he was stubborn and would continue.

A few of his options were slightly better ones, so he observed them a touch longer than usual before marking two of them on a "maybe" list that he'd go back through if he couldn't find his absolute perfect specimen. Then he came upon a school where several dots lit up the screen- four of them. He considered passing them all by (it was a high school, after all, and he'd prefer to not deal with teenagers), but he figured one of them might suit the maybe list for in the future when they were older. He dove into the building towards the closest, having an answer immediately for that one as the boy would be far too strong for anyone's good. He passed the blond by and went a few classrooms down, tapping on his screen silently to mark that one off before shaking his head to himself at the second as well. A Goth girl would surely enjoy it far too much and would be severely rebellious. The next was far too small and wimpy, another easy no. At least this was a quick process with these teenagers.

He almost passed by the next one. This boy was barely any bigger than the band kid he'd just passed up, but something made him pause. Something familiar... He landed, just as silent and invisible as before, and watched. The boy was taking notes, clearly bored as the teacher lectured on about Langston Hughes in far too monotoned a voice for proper teaching. There was something there in this child that was making him pause, and he wasn't sure what.

He stepped over closer and leaned down to look straight at the boy's face, careful not to breathe for the moment lest the boy detect him there by that. Still not enough to understand the familiarity... He started to move upright again, prepared to put the boy on his "maybe" list for now until he glanced the name across the top of an assignment just below the boy's notebook. He froze and stared a few moments.

Then, Vlad Plasmius grinned wickedly. Perfect specimen? Not quite. Perfect revenge with a good-enough specimen? _Excellent.  
_

* * *

Nobody expects bad things to happen to or around them. All those stories on the news of killings and robberies and missing persons seem to be just that. Stories. Sure, most towns and cities will have the occasional shock towards reality, but it was something very infrequent for the small city of Amity Park, Illinois. They had a share fair of standard crime, but it was overall a pretty safe place to live and even recognized for that fact. That was why the general reaction of the townspeople when the resident maniacs started shouting around town through megaphones and barely avoiding every other vehicle on the road was to say the crazies had just overlooked their son or that their son was hiding from them out of embarrassment. That was why the town was satisfied when the police finally caught up to the Fenton's RV after midnight and told them they'd be fined with disturbing the peace if they did not immediately return to their home and stop the noise, figuring things would be solved by the morning as the town grew quiet.

Nobody expected that there would be "Missing" flyers on every possible surface the next morning, a photo of a black-haired, blue-eyed teen staring at everyone. Definitely nobody expected in the afternoon that an Amber Alert would be put out by the police that Daniel James Fenton, age 14, was missing, last seen by a school bus of students as he got off and went into his home, alone because his sister had gone to the library to study. He wasn't there when the Fenton parents arrived a couple hours later after a "ghost hunting patrol" to which the couple had an alibi because they'd been stopped by the police after damaging public property. Everyone else around him had equally solid alibis, so the police had to decidedly rule it as a runaway situation despite how much the Fenton parents swore their son would never do such a thing. And with that decision, everyone who wasn't part of his life decided to continue going about their usual business.

That is, until he city grew uneasy again as no news came in. Most of the posters stayed up and reminded people constantly of the missing teen. The Fenton parents were either out and about, shouting for their son, or completely out of sight with the ridiculous sign upon their house even shut off. His classmates in particular—all except his few friends and sister—said at first "of course he'd want away from his crazy family". But after a few days of staring at the empty seat in their classrooms and noticing for once just how distressed his friends and sister were, even Danny's worst bullies grew quiet and somewhat worried. On the Tuesday of the next week, six days since Danny's disappearance, Dash Baxter himself even apologized to Sam and Tucker at realizing how heavy the situation was and how upset the goth-and-geek duo were. It set in that Danny was genuinely _missing_.

Almost another week went by before the police released some more information, the results of searching the Fenton household. There was no evidence of forced entry, no evidence of a struggle, but there was also no evidence of Danny simply leaving. No note. The boy's keys and cell phone had been left in his backpack inside, but the front door was locked when the Fenton parents got home. No windows had been left open that he might've climbed through, no ladder marks or rope remnants were found anywhere, and nothing was missing from his room to say he'd actually run away. He didn't even seem to have a jacket with him though a chill of fall had begun earlier than usual. Daniel Fenton had vanished, and Amity Park was starting to suffer in ways they hadn't known of.

* * *

 _AN: What's this? A new fanfiction for once? I really hope I don't leave you all hanging for three years on this one because I'm actually exited to write it. It's going to be dark, possibly gorey, and I can't guarantee what the ending will be._

 _This is about to be darker than anything I've posted on here, and you all will get to see my improvements from my older works as well. I hope you enjoy it at least. -Via_


	2. Chapter 2

_Small AN: A fair amount of cursing will go on in this fic. I can definitely write without the language, but it just feels appropriate where I use it. It'll mainly be Danny who uses it, and in this AU, he doesn't have to be a family-friendly teenager._

* * *

So much pain. He was in so much pain and too groggy to figure out exactly why. The where was easy- he hurt everywhere. Every part of him was stinging or sore or outright aching, but he just didn't have a clue why. Before he could figure that out, though, there was a sharper pain in his arm and too soon, he was forced back down into sleep filled with horrible nightmares of even more pain.

* * *

Everything was green when he woke up, his sleep-addled mind highly confused by this fact. He still hurt, but it wasn't quite as bad. Instead, though, everything felt cold and almost numb. He blinked sluggishly, eyes adjusting a little more when he forced them back open again. Everything was green because that was the only light in the room. It took him a moment to look where it was coming from- each movement incredibly stiff, but it just confused him more when he saw a giant circle of swirls of green curling around one another a few feet behind his head. After watching it for a few moments, he blinked again and looked around a bit more as he grew more aware. It looked sort of like his parents' lab but only in essentials- the metal walls, metal floor, ghost hunting gadgets everywhere… He wasn't really awake enough to wonder why there was ghost hunting gear anywhere besides his parents' lab and instead just continued to glance around. He was in the middle of the room and couldn't really move anything except his head from how stiff and sore he was, but it felt like he wasn't missing any parts of himself at least.

Danny just laid on the surface for a few more minutes as he woke up, closing his eyes a bit since the green was giving him a headache. He warmed up suddenly and wished he hadn't since it let more of the pain set in, but it was helping him wake up better anyways. He could pinpoint more of the pain better as well; his arms were probably the worst of the actual pain with stinging along the insides of his elbows and pinching at his wrists. There was an odd weight that came with the pinching, and the same weight was across his chest and ankles as well. His eyes snapped open again and he looked down at himself, finally aware enough for the things happening to register in his brain. Why the fuck was he strapped down? Why the fuck was he strapped down to an examination table? Naturally, he started pressing against the restraints, beginning to freak out. What was going on? Where was he? Should he call for help? Who had done this to him? Why had they done this to him?

Danny struggled against the restraints until he was halfway panting, but they weren't even budging which meant there'd be no way he could break out of them on his own. Most of the sleepiness had been pushed off quickly, but there was still a tug of it for some reason. The same tug he remembered from when he'd broken his leg in the fourth grade. He'd been drugged into sleeping. Of course he had. There was no way he'd have fallen asleep on a cold, hard examination table with no memory of how he'd gotten there… Shit, what did he remember? He'd gotten home from school, set his things down, and had started going to play on the computer before it got taken over by his parents building on their Ghost Portal some more then… nothing.

He didn't know what to do. He didn't want to call for help because surely whoever had done this would be nearby. He couldn't break free of the restraints. A small bit of irritation with himself grew. His parents had gone over things like what to do here with him and Jazz when they were younger out of paranoia they would someday be taken as bait by the ghosts his parents hunted. Wait… Ghosts. Danny looked around the room again. Why the hell was there so much ghost hunting gear? Did this actually involve ghosts somehow? He didn't know what the hell was going on with any of this, and he didn't remember any of that advice from his parents that he'd brushed off as useless. One thing he did know well, though? Movies. He wasn't any sort of James Bond hero, but he'd do his best to try some other way to get out.

The thing with being a teenager who had watched way too many movies in his life was that Danny was quickly clinging to and hoping for some of those stupid, predictable tropes to happen. For the "villain" to come in and explain their plan before he'd somehow escape and expose the plan before it happened. For the metal straps keeping him locked down to suddenly be undone without explanation. For Danny himself to be the damsel in distress in a sense and someone to save him (though his imagination could only picture his parents busting in with full ghost-hunting gear, he'd gladly accept the sight that was usually embarrassing).

Instead, he was stuck alone and confused and occasionally trying to pull free for what definitely had to be hours. He figured out a bit more about his surroundings- recognized some of the weapons on the walls though they were different colors than those his parents built and the swirling green thing had the same shape of the unfinished Ghost Portal his parents were building… If Jazz were there, she'd surely go on about how impossible that would have to be since "ghosts don't exist" but Danny hadn't ever been as doubtful as his sister. Even in his time he was stuck alone didn't help him figure anything out properly, though.

He would've expected footsteps and the door opening dramatically if he'd been in a movie, but the reality of it was a deep voice came from somewhere down past his feet with no warning to where Danny jumped and almost pissed himself.

"Dear me, you seem to have figured out a way to take out your IV after all. I'd applaud the intelligence needed for it if not for the fact you were surely fast asleep with no clue what you were even doing." Danny shot his head upwards to look towards the source of the voice, but the angle was too far down for him to manage it. He didn't know if he should speak or not yet, but he did know he should pay attention. It was a man's voice, deep and a bit gravelly. The man continued. "Nonetheless, I lack the time to set the drip up again at the moment, so I'm afraid you'll have to go without until I return."

Danny panicked a bit. The guy who was so obviously doing this to him was just going to leave again with him like this? "Wait, who are you? What's going on?" Hopefully talking would help him with something, anything. He didn't understand why his throat was so dry, and his voice was barely there.

"Ah, ah, ah. I'm lack for time presently, remember, my dear boy? We shall discuss when I finish my tasks for the day in… Oh, about ten hours. Ta ta."

"What? Ten _hours_?" Danny asked quickly, trying to look towards the man again, but there came no response despite the lack of footsteps. After a few moments of silence, Danny called out again in frustration. What the fuck had that just been? And what did the guy mean that Danny had taken out an IV? He'd been knocked out and strapped down. So many questions were swirling in his mind, and it didn't seem like any of them were going to be answered anytime soon.

* * *

So long. It was dragging on for so fucking long. Danny had no clue what time it was, he had no way to tell, and everything around him just stayed the same. The possible Ghost Portal behind him was slowly swirling, and it went way past what he'd considered boredom before. Of course he was anxious about his own well-being and the fact he'd apparently been fucking _kidnapped_ , but the fits of further irritation he had throughout the day had just proved better that he couldn't make it out of the metal bars holding him down. They were thick bands held tight around his chest and wrists and ankles, and he couldn't even tell what they were made out of. When he struggled too much, he couldn't catch his breath for what surely had to be half an hour from the restriction against his chest. Any hope of some cliche movie plot happening was lost as well, but every time he attempted to think of any plan to get himself out of the situation just left him drawing blanks.

By the time he finally heard footsteps, he felt like he was going out of his mind and was grateful to hear them as much as he hated that fact. He'd even begun to talk to himself, but that was deliberate to exercise his voice that grew stronger as he did so. If he'd been on IV fluids, it made sense for his throat to be so dry though working with it made him realize just how thirsty he was. He doubted at first that he was actually hearing the footsteps when they came since his ears had started ringing from the silence at some point. It was definite when a mechanical whirring went on for a moment and the footsteps entered the room. Danny tried his best to look towards the door, but the room was too large so the angle was too far just as it had been that morning.

"Ah, actually awake still? I find that surprising for a teenager, but I suppose you have been sleeping for quite a time." It was the same voice from that morning but somehow different… And then the lights were flicked on overheard, and Danny had to shut them against the pain of it. While they were As he re-opened them and blinked to adjust them, a figure finally came into view. He had sickly pale blue skin, glowing red eyes, black hair swept up into sharp points, and he wore some sort of white suit with a red-lined cloak clasped around his neck. The part that unsettled Danny the most was that his captor was _glowing_. It seemed too much to be real- that he might be hallucinating from the nothingness that had gone throughout the day. He did, however, fully believe he'd just spent ten or more hours alone with nothing going on. And then the words settled in his mind.

"Wait… What do you mean 'quite a time'? How long have I been asleep? How long have you kept me here?" Danny tried to keep his voice calm, but he was so unsettled by all of this that the strength he'd been working on with his throat had faltered. It had set in more during the ridiculous amount of time he'd just spent alone, feeling like he was losing his mind, that he had been kidnapped. The small comfort he had was convincing himself that he couldn't have been here that long, surely.

"Ah, ah, ah. Too many questions, and I'll take full liberty in putting you back under, my boy," the man warned him. Danny considered a moment before keeping his mouth shut for the moment, realizing he didn't know anything about this man. He was clearly enough of a fruit-loop to _kidnap someone_ and then there was the fact Danny wasn't sure he was even a human being. After seeing Danny wasn't going to reply to that, the man continued. "In due time, I plan to explain what you need to know about your current situation. However, I first require an agreement from you." He paused a moment, but Danny kept quiet again. "I plan for you to become my apprentice, but before I accept you as such… You must renounce that dreadful oaf you call a father." His voice stayed level and calm as if he were simply asking someone to pick something up for them.

Danny felt his eyes widen in surprise then his brows pull in confusion before he replied without actually thinking of his situation. " _What?_ What kind of a demand is that? No, I'd never do that." He realized very quickly at the fury that leaked into his captor's expression that he'd fucked up. Bigtime.

* * *

 _AN: Oooookay. So from here on out, it's probably going to get quite dark. I'm not sure how much I'll actually write out and how much will be implied, but things are not going to go well for Danny. Don't worry, though. This fic isn't just about mindless suffering that leads to more pain. I've got a plan that will lead into much more, so I hope you're all able to stick around. Review if you have absolutely anything to say, please. It helps motivate me._


	3. Chapter 3

_AN: It might be prudent to re-read the previous chapter. I made a few edits to it that I felt were important if small._

* * *

Vlad sat back to himself, idly holding his teacup without drinking on it. He had some contemplating to do and was honestly quite disappointed. The boy had not only turned down the option Vlad had given him but had outright rejected it. That being said, it had been satisfying to see the fear flood the teen's face when he'd realized how big of a mistake he'd made. Even still, though, there had been no retraction of the statement denying Vlad's request, so he had gone along with his own plan.

As soon as he'd decided to take Jack's son instead of searching for his own perfect specimen, he'd begun adapting his scheme to have a better fit. Had things gone the way he'd been hoping, Daniel would have renounced his father, accepted Vlad as a mentor once his new powers were explained, and then agree to Vlad's plan to utterly _destroy_ the oaf of a man named Jack Fenton. He'd have sent the boy back home to blame Jack for his disappearance and claim Maddie was suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, and with the both of them having their powers, they'd have managed to convince everyone of it with enough overshadowing. Vlad had pulled off much larger through overshadowing, after all. However, it hadn't gone the best way possible.

He had a back-up plan, at least, because Vlad Masters always had another plan. Multiple, in fact (there was a reason he was a chess champion), but it was hardly as preferable as the first. With the first option out of Daniel willingly agreeing, he was now onto his second option of frightening the boy enough where he'd follow commands. Then, once Jack was ruined and Maddie was in Vlad's grasp, he'd work on soothing the boy's worries until he was a proper apprentice.

With how quickly Daniel had rejected the notion of denouncing Jack, however, Vlad was annoyingly doubtful that it would be an easy plan to bring to fruition. Still, there was a chance the boy would take back his words after a round or two of being properly frightened. Vlad was still smug with himself of how he'd thought through his various levels of fear-induction as well. He'd decided to start by showing Daniel his superior intelligence of all things ghostly- which now included Daniel himself. Then he'd proceed to his superior capabilities with his powers. Finally, he'd go about it the rougher way by electrocution until Daniel remembered his transformation into a half-ghost and would essentially relive the experience at the same time as continuing to endure further electrocution. If Daniel had yet to change his mind to Vlad's satisfaction by then, he'd repeat the process with raised severity until the boy was molded to the shape Vlad wanted. It was thrice-fold and ingenious, something he fully expected of himself.

He was pulled from his reverie by a particularly loud scream that made its way through the dense walls of the large, transparent container in the corner of the room (he refused to call it the "b" word lest one of the worst pests in the Ghost Zone show up). Vlad watched on for a moment with a blank expression before his nose wrinkled as he paid a bit more attention and set his tea down. The boy had urinated and vomited all over himself in his convulsions, and it certainly made the sight rather disgusting in a way he had not fully expected. On contact with full ghosts, Blood Blossoms would severely burn the ghost and on ingestion or introduction to the bloodstream, a full ghost would disintegrate quickly but very painfully. He had tested those things out himself, but on a half-ghost? He knew from being poisoned once a long time ago- when he was still brand new to his powers and had just managed to find an entrance to the Ghost Zone for the first time and had yet to incite fear into its inhabitants- that they would not similarly kill a half-ghost. He had carefully tested further with smaller samples of his own blood and the blossoms to confirm this fact, and while the results were conclusive that death would not occur from Blood Blossoms directly, there was still information missing. So he had figured to benefit himself by researching the full effects and process when not treated with an antidote as his own bout with it had been. Punish the boy and learn more about his own physiology- he couldn't ask for a better case of two birds with one stone.

After a moment of contemplation, he projected intangibility to Daniel and the floor of the cage (he'd designed it beautifully to where he could still manipulate it fully from the outside) until the unwanted liquids disappeared through the floor to go into his specially developed cleaning system. That had been a useful invention for when weapon production backfired as the usual mess of ectoplasm grew to be quite tiresome to deal with, and he could hardly allow his maids to clean his lair. He let tangibility returned and picked up the book he'd been neglecting in favor of his own thoughts before calmly beginning to read as if the horrifying screams of pain that came from no more than ten feet away weren't even happening. As if there wasn't a teenage boy burning in his own skin and experiencing the most pain he could remember having in his life right beside him.

* * *

Jasmine Fenton was exhausted. She had every right to be. When Danny had disappeared, almost four months ago now, Jazz- for the first time in a long while- had not known what to do. There was nothing to do except get out there with her parents and search for him when he hadn't been at the house that night when everyone got home. Rather than going with them in the RV, Jazz had started by calling his friends then checking Sam's and Tucker's housing to make sure they weren't lying, but the two of them had joined her in looking and had quickly started to grow just as worried when none of their calls or texts were answered. Danny hadn't ever been the type to stop replying to people when he was mad or upset, but they still tried to soothe their own minds that he surely had to be alright.

That hadn't stopped the elder Fentons from printing out missing fliers when they'd been forced to return home that night by the police then pasting them all over town. Jazz had held onto hope that Danny would turn up somewhere silly or for some stupid or irresponsible reason until the police searched the house and his backpack to find nothing had been moved out of place and that Danny couldn't have anything with him.

The couple months after that had been, in a word Jazz hardly ever used, hell. Her parents stopped working in favor of looking for Danny in as many places as they possibly could until Jazz started making them designate time to their jobs when the bill payments started getting behind and they'd had too many meals of simple sandwiches. The science community would only support them still if they were making progress, so she'd convinced them to work even a little bit each day with the main reason being that Danny would need a house to come home to. That reason slowly stopped working as well as time went on and their hope started to faulter. It took Jazz helping them when she was out of school each day to get her parents back into working at any sort of regular pace which turned out for the better when she noticed some discrepancies in the blueprints of her parents' "ghost portal". She couldn't imagine it would have worked out well to have the On/Off switch inside the machine. The only day she saw them happy since Danny's disappearance was the day the portal was finished and turned on, but that led to more anxiety on their parts. Jazz did not believe in ghosts. She never had, and she had convinced herself that she never would. Her parents, though? As soon as they had the portal turned on, they immediately shut the doors of it and went into a slump. To them, they believed there was another dimension on the other side of those doors and that meant there was a whole massive other place Danny could be lost in.

Jazz had been the one to send off the information from the newly completed portal for them, but at the very least, it got a bonus for the two of them and a massive extension on their research grant that allowed Jazz to give her parents a break for the time being. It had been over a month since that, and her parents had still done barely anything but look for Danny. Jazz had taken it on herself to make sure they were taking care of themselves the best they could, but it was drawing her thin on patience and ability.

So there was more than enough reason for Jazz to be exhausted with the emotional weight of caring for her parents, the stress of keeping them all fed and the bills paid, keeping up in all her classes, and blaming herself for choosing that day of all times to go to the library after school instead of driving home with Danny so that he maybe wouldn't have disappeared. It was on a particularly bad day, however, that she realized just how tired she was of being exhausted- how sick she was of all of it. And it was on that day that she took over one more task and started planning. She would find her brother. She would find him and bring him home if it was the last thing she did because she refused to accept what so many had tried to tell her. She refused to believe he was... gone forever, and when he was back, everything could progress again instead of stagnating.

It was on that day that Jasmine Fenton took over and began reforming the search for her brother into the most elaborate plan she knew to be possible for her and her parents to pull off.

* * *

 _AN: I realize I forgot to mention as well (or maybe I just wasn't as clear as I wanted to be), but I wanted to explictly state this because I think it's important. The main focus of this is not Vlad torturing Danny; the main focus is going to be Danny after the torture. I found it to be an interesting concept of what Danny would think of and do with his powers if he couldn't blame them on his own mistake but instead blamed their existence on something that will have caused him so much pain and trauma. So these beginning chapters are primarily exposition for the full reason this story began. So I hope you all will be able to bear with me. In my plan, there should be one more chapter after this one which involves the torture itself directly then the rest of the fic will open up to focus on Danny trying to cope. But as it is, this chapter wasn't too bad to write out. The next one might take longer, however, because of my current plan for it. Lemme know what you think._


End file.
